There are 22,138 registered voters in Meridian. Of those, less than 50% actually voted Tuesday. The final tally is that 46.71% of registered voters cast votes.

In all, incumbent mayor Cheri Barry won 6 out of the 17 precincts in the city. All, except for one of those, were in the North Meridian area; the other was at Willow Ridge Apartments. As for mayor-elect Percy Bland, he won the remaining 11 precincts with his largest numbers coming from the Velma Young Center where he received 942 votes or 84.41% of the votes that were cast.

Both Bland and Barry received their lowest number of votes at the Meridian Housing Authority precinct. With less than 80 people voting there, it reported the lowest turnout of all 17 precincts in Meridian. The total number of votes cast Tuesday in Meridian was 10,340.

Leading up to vote, the Lauderdale County Election Commission was contracted by the city of Meridian to assist with the election. District 4 Commissioner Gloria Dancy says on election day, one of the commissioners biggest challenges involved monitoring people who were watching the polls.

"Keeping the poll watchers in their place, so that they did not interfere with the poll workers doing their job," says Dancy. "Each party had their own manual, but informing them that the manual that they needed to go by was the state manual, and informing them that we're going to do it by the state manual."

With the elections now over, election officials work is virtually done. Next up is the official swearing in of municipal elected officials on July 1st.

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